Shades of Galileo

Recently, a second round of emails taken from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were released online. This release -- dubbed "ClimateGate 2.0" -- is once again revealing that those scientists and politicians pushing an alarmist view of Earth's climate being in danger due to manmade carbon dioxide emissions have engaged in deception, distortion, intimidation and even criminal activities as pertains to Freedom of Information legislation.

As bad as the revelation has been, the response by those whose careers and financial interests are dependent upon such alarmist dogma has been draconian.

Donna Laframboise who hosts the excellent climate change skeptic blog No Frakking Consensus and is the author of The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken For The World's Top Climate Expert recently reported on how fellow blogger Roger Tattersall -- who runs Tallbloke's Talkshop -- was recently subjugated to officially sanctioned persecution.

Tallbloke just happened to be one of the first people to report and link to the latest batch of released emails. Because of it, last week the police came to his home and seized both his computers and router and even attempted to coerce access to his blog. You can read more about it via a National Post article authored by Ms. Laframboise: Climate Crackdown.

And Tallbloke was not the only person being targeted. As it turns out, the U.S. Justice Department had sent a formal request to blogging company WordPress to have all communications and records ("evidence" as they put it) for Tallbloke as well as Jeff ID at the Air Vent (http://NOconsensus.wordpress.com) as well as noted Canadian mathematician -- and co-destroyer of Michael Mann's hockey stick -- Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit blog.

This is more than a little disturbing. The original ClimateGate emails clearly revealed criminal breaches of Access to Information laws on both sides of the ocean. Did the U.S. Justice Department send the police out to seize the computers of those involved? No. Did they send any notice to the University of East Anglia or Penn State (Michael Mann's employer) to have their data files and emails frozen as "evidence" of a crime? No.

The only action taken in response to the original ClimateGate release were complete whitewashes (greenwashes as it were) by both UK officials who barely lifted a finger in their examinations and Penn State who didn't even depose key figures who would have revealed a great deal about what was really going on.

And yet average citizen bloggers who simply redirected readers to information from another source that was out on the internet are being treated as criminals. Why? Because they did the one thing that is not to be tolerated when dealing with climate change alarmism: they were skeptics.

It just goes to show, one cannot question the supposed science nor the stances of the religious leaders of the day without facing totalitarian authority.

Science is the child of skepticism.

When skeptics are treated as heretics, you are no longer dealing with science. You are dealing with the blind faith of a religion.

Where's ACTRA on the censoring of Sun TV?

Last year the arts community -- especially ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists -- came down hard on Stephen Harper's government Bill C-10 which would in part effectively cut funding to artistic endeavors that were contrary to public interests. Some, such as director David Cronenberg, went so far as to call this censorship.

Bill C-10 in no way would prevent artists from creating, displaying or performing their works. It was simply telling them that they would have to get support from other sources. That is not censorship. If it was censorship then the government would effectively have a responsibility to fund all artists on demand.

I'm an artist. And I get it.

But where is ACTRA and all these arts community figures now that Sun TV (erroneously called "Fox News North") is under attack by the media on all sides? Where is the arts community when we have so many people calling for this private, non-public funded news outlet to be prevented access to the airwaves?

From Wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body."

Censorship is not the denial of funding from one source. It is suppression. No artist was being suppressed from performing or creating under Bill C-10. Sure they would have to find alternate sources to create their artistic works at the level of expense that would be optimum. But that's not suppression.

Suppression is when we have the media demanding a voice to be silenced. Suppression is when we have politicians wanting voices to be silenced.

And what has the arts community said against these expressions of desired censorship? Well, I'm more likely to hear the birds chirping outside ACTRA's downtown headquarters while standing beside one of Emirates A-380's when taking off on a runway at Toronto's Pearson airport than hear one of their representatives on TV defending Sun TV's free expression.

Why? Because they aren't the champions against censorship they claim to be.

Hypocrites.

Free Speech VS Permissible Speech

It is somewhat disturbing to see the cavalier attitude that the political Left has with the idea of freedom of speech and expression. Freedom of Speech is defined as one of our human rights which Leftists will scream to high heaven they are the defenders of and the Right want to throw away.

However, the Left seems to be the ones who are eager to curtail freedom of speech further and further. First they push for hate crime legislation based upon what people say. And we can see the result being totalitarian enforcement by seemingly all-powerful organizations such as Canada's Human Rights Tribunal. They even have no issue in demeaning freedom of speech as an American Value.

(I'm sorry... is that supposed to be an insult?)

Then we see the Left wanting to restrict what one can say politically. The current brouhaha over Sun TV -- or as propagandists and their enablers call it "Fox News North" -- has revealed the political left for the opportunistic hypocrites that they are. The so-called defenders of human rights have revealed their true intention to transform the concept of freedom of speech into a freedom of leftists-speech.

But speech is either free or permissible. One can either be free to speak or permitted to speak. Just like life and death, married or not married, animal or mineral, there is no in-between for free speech and permissible speech. If one is under political pressure not to speak, that is an infringement on one's ability to speak freely. And at the very moment that speech is regulated, the absence of free speech is created.

It's as definable as something and nothing.

Some people will of course come back and say, "Well, what about Holocaust deniers? Do you think they should have the freedom to deny the Holocaust?"

Uh... yeah! They should! How else are we supposed to ensure that our children know that the Holocaust is real and that there are morons out there who refuse to acknowledge something with insurmountable evidence? In fact, letting Holocaust deniers speak gives us the best opportunity to deny them.

Sweeping a mess under the carpet doesn't clean up the mess. It just puts it somewhere else where it can build in the dark until it's a much bigger problem.

I'm an artist which of course means I'm a little bit sensitive to the notion of censorship. In my view, there can be no greater error in society than to deny expression. Whether we agree or disagree, we cannot give up this right. In conjunction to the right to life, it is the most important right in that afford all other rights.

If we cannot speak, we cannot fight for our rights. And if our speech becomes subjected to any other's opinion, we have lost everything.

The Left should celebrate an entity such as Sun TV. Unfortunately, they have failed the first test of freedom of speech, that being respecting the right to opinions they would disagree with. It is impossible for any person to be a champion of free speech at the same time demanding the prevention of opposing views.

The efforts of the Left to prevent Sun TV is nothing short of utter hypocrisy. And it is truly disgusting.